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Programmer tries to explain binary search to the police
(startrek.website)
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this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2023
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IT consulting pro-tip: Customers would rather pay for your time and expertise, than be made to feel stupid that they didn't think of something so simple themselves.
After working in desktop support for a year after college, I realized that people just wanted their problem solved and to not feel frustrated. That realization made my job immensely easier because I pivoted from copying a file in 30 seconds and walking away to talking to them a little bit and letting them feel good after we were done. My ticket closing speed slowed down a little but people felt better and I consistently got positive feedback.
Dude same here. I usually say stuff along the lines of 'yea it took me forever the first time to figure it out' or 'it's a common issue that a lot of people have, I'll get it sorted in a sec for you no problem'. Make it seem like they're not stupid, regardless of the truth and then fix it, keeps em happy and more willing to cooperate with you as well.
I also talk through what I'm doing and if they show interest I'll teach them so they can fix it in the future, 'ah I've seen this before, took me like a hour to figure it out on my computer, for me it was a chrome update that broke how downloaded files open. Here let me right click the file, and go to open with, we hit Adobe pdf and check the always open with this program button, that should do it let's test it out. OK seems like its good to go. Let me know if you have any more issues'. If they don't show interest then it's no problem.
Are you my kindred spirit!? :P Thats almost exactly what I do too!
My favourite is when someone apologies for not knowing something or having dumb questions. Apart from "there is never a dumb question" because there usually isn't, I typically respond with "if everyone already knew how to do everything, I'd be out of a job" which always seems to go down well.
Some of my favorite help desk moments are those times you get to a be teacher for someone that's genuinely listening and happy to learn.
My go to is usually 'everything is easy if you know how to do it'
When I started in support 15 years ago my boss said: "First you solve the person, then you solve the problem".
He was a good dude.
What would you recommend for solving people? Does a household base like NaOH suffice?
Solving, not dissolving.
Customers typically stop complaining once in aqueous form.
What about in soap form?
Same story here, actually. I cut my teeth on internet telephony (modems) support for an ISP. People would call up furious about not being able to connect. I learned that chatting people up during a long Windows reboot did a lot to humanize their struggle and get them to calm down and loosen up. First few times were organic, then I started looking for pretenses to do this, just to bring the temperature down for the rest of the call.
Call centers tell you to empathize but that's not something you can teach. You can either do it or you can't. So they give those terrible scripts, and then some of them require you to speak the scripted lines, even when you know all it does is piss the caller off.
No hears that scripted pablum at the start of call and thinks it's genuine. No one. "I'm sorry to hear your having issues sir, but I'll be happy to assist you." genuinely comes off condescending at this point. They know you know it's scripted, they know you know the representative has to say it, but they make them do it anyway.
Here's what I found doing ISP call center work, and it worked virtually every single time: imply through tone and pointed comments you're as frustrated as the called with how shitty the service and the hardware is. They're never prepared for it, it always catches their anger off guard.
Don't outright say "Yeah, Cox is absolute dog shit, and that POS gateway we make you pay for isn't worth the cost of the the technician we're sending out to 'fix' it." You'll get in trouble for that.
But if you're careful and creative, you can make them appreciate you think that
Just yesterday, I was helping this manager set up a new system of ticket line (the kind where you get a ticket number and wait for it to be called in a panel). He complained that they didn't have a proper printer just for these tickets, so he made the tickets in excel and printed them. To the right of the number, someone would mark the service, from a list of 6.
"Why not use a single letter prefix and print different piles of passwords? (A01, A02, A03; B01, B02, etc)"
"That will use less paper, you can print 2 tickets using the same space. Also, the amount of tickets always depends on the number of people that show up, but you'll have a better idea of which service is being needed each day"
Mr manager didn't like the idea and moved on to another problem.
Eh, it's less intuitive than you might think, as someone who already knows how to do it.
I once had to explain this process to a software engineer who was quite senior to me. The guy wasn't any idiot, he was a pretty competent engineer, he just didn't know this trick.
The cops might even already know how to do it, they just don't want to, because they're cops.